Sydney based Scott Marr emailed over some recent works which he creates through pyrography, the process of burning wood or other materials with a heated poker. All the colors in the works below have been collected in nature and processed by Marr... Very natural style.

Pyrography is the practice of burning an image onto a surface, using specially designed tools. I work mostly on paper but I also enjoy working with wood.

The pigments I use are all handmade from natural materials, most of which I collect from the bush near my home, the roadside, the garden and sometimes even the kitchen. Some of my favourite raw materials include ochres, sap, flowers, bark, leaves, coffee beans and berries. Part of my processing technique is to add natural mordants (fixatives), preservatives and binding substances.

Street artist Above sent us a copy of his new book Passport (published through Zero Publishing). In fact, he sent us the limited (200) boxed edition which comes in a huge/ smartly designed monster sized passport complete with a print inside. Not sure how to store it on a book shelf as it would need to be leaned against a wall it's so huge.

The book chronicles his career as he traveled the world first adding his arrows to electric lines and walls to his interest in stenciling as it got more and more popular. Our favorites in the book would be the signage he did with RIPO.

ABOVE started traditional graffiti of tagging freight trains in California in 1995. ABOVE moved to Paris at the age of 19 where he started painting his trademark arrow (pointing above) all around the city. Since then ABOVE has been consistently traveling around the world doing many large self-financed "tours" with each tour exploring a new medium or style of artworks. ABOVE has been successful in putting his street artworks in over 90 cities in 60 different countries around the globe.

Not all "street" art needs to be on the street... David de la Mano of Uruguay emailed over some recent work he did on some miscellaneous cement sitting on the beach in La Floresta, Montevideo. Like it.

Last week we gave the ol' Nikon to our intern Alex Uhrich and told him to make his way around the Mission where we're located so we can share a taste of the dynamic neighborhood that we work in.

If you don't live near San Francisco and don't know, the Mission is a latino neighborhood with plenty of taco shops, clothing shops, pawn shops, travel agencies, grocery stores, and everything in-between... These are his photos and his words.

I making this stuff with a customized Makita BBX7600 - Four stroke solid state ignition, custom paint delivery system. Dispersion capacity - 3 Ltrs of paint per second to a maximum distance of 15 meters. -Stephen Hiam (Berlin via London)

San Francisco's FFDG is excited to announce the opening reception for MIDNIGHT ON THE SUN featuring over 60 new paintings by Los Angeles based artists Jay Howell & Mark Whalen (Kill Pixie). An opening reception will be held on Saturday February 18, 2012 (6-9pm). Also on the same night be a zine release for Jay Howell's newest zine THE DARK WAVE published by Unpiano Books & Mt.St.Mtn. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

To be added to the preview, email: info(at)ffdg.net

About Jay Howell
"Artist Jay Howell has been a strong presence in the Bay Area for the past few years (now living and working in Los Angeles), sharpening his cartoon-style drawings of skinny guys with erections, naked chicks on skateboards, dogs, beer, rockers, and endless good times. His art manages to be whimsical and crude at the same time, but above all damn right funny. His zine Punks Git Cut, and animated series called "The Forest City Rockers,” have deservingly earned him a devoted following. While “Forest City Rockers” seemed like the apex in punk rock cartoons, he’s taken things even further by developing the characters for Fox’s latest Sunday night animated sitcom, "Bob’s Burgers.” Produced by Loren Bouchard, best known for creating Comedy Central's "Dr. Katz Professional Therapist" and Adult Swim’s "Home Movies," "Bob’s Burgers’ about a family that runs a fumbling burger joint. Howell’s style and humor are a perfect match for the team, earning him a well deserved place alongside animation greats. Howell is currently in production developing a show for Nickelodeon." -Justine Sharrock, 2011

About Mark Whalen (Kill Pixie)
From his beginnings in Sydney, Australia, Mark Whalen has evolved into an artist whose meticulously crafted paintings and sculptures examine the human experience by exploring communication, emotion, sexuality, invention, interaction, and ritual - all with an undercurrent of quiet absurdity. Whalen’s line precision and glowing color palette is enhanced by the introduction of colors of light, caution and arousal, making the interaction of his subjects more accentuated and accessible. Thick, seductive layers of clear glossy resin create a post-modern plane for the artist to explore spatial possibilities and relativity within the narrative.

Whalen has evolved into an artist whose meticulously executed paintings now have a prominent place in galleries around the world. He was also included in 2009's Apocalypse Wow! Exhibition at MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, Italy, and 2010's SPACE INVADERS Exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia. His work has also appeared in publications such as Juxtapoz, Modart Europe, Lodown, Arkitip, Art Ltd., Anthem, and Monster Children. He currently lives and paints in Los Angeles California.

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The exhibition is open to the public and will be on view from February 18, 2012 - March 24, 2012. Gallery hours are as follow: Wednesday - Saturday 1pm - 6:00pm. And by appointment. FFDG is located at 2277 Mission Street, San Francisco CA 94110 For more information or to request a preview of the available work please contact the gallery at info(at)ffdg.net

Showing 50 works on book pages, here is just a few pieces by Jay Howell which will be on display @FFDG (opening Saturday) and for sale at only $100 each (framed). To be added to the preview list, email: info(at)ffdg.net

Here in Brazil there a lot of projects that have been sponsored by the government, but don't think that the process to make it happen is easy, it is quite the opposite. Imaterial is the conceptual project of Brazilian artists Bruno Kurru and Marília Coelho. Have a look at the official text from the project, and check out the website itself. It's an amazing mental and visual experience.

An endless website. As Bruno Kurru and Marília Coelho believe, endless like our souls. How does one transfer a dancing soul to digital media? That was the challenge of the project Imaterial, sponsored by the Brazilian Culture Ministry.

Both artists believe that the aesthetic, and ethical dimension of art works are deeply connected to the artist that create it, and that is why all life attitudes, conscious or not, reflect directly through the creation.

This consciousness about life, about I/the other/around is to them the Spirituality. These last years they are trying to re-connect with it, and they found a strong connection with Kandinsky's words from the book "Concerning the Spiritual In Art" 1910. This is where their inspiration came from.

During the process, neither separated from their individual lives. They went deep into the concept, certain that it would make them better humans beings (even though they were already an amazing couple in life, and in their respective arts). They became more conscious, they became people that pass on mutual respect, people that search to get out of contemporary anxiety, instead sharing the love for everything around them. Those very important virtues permeate all the choices of the project.

The website was built as a blog, without size limits, where content is posted individually. Content can also be deleted, changed, over posted, etc. For this reason the website is endless, and every time you visit it, you have the chance to see entirely new content, and new aesthetic situations.

What makes me super excited about the website is that the I can directly interact with the content, reorganizing the way I want. It's great to get lost, or to find yourself there, finding yourself in unknown places, open, and flexible to new ideas. It is a direct reflection of the work process, and the lives of the couple, and artists Bruno Kurru and Marília Coelho.

Justin Angelos (living in Santa Cruz via Los Angeles) emailed over some recent collage works. We like his work which is inspired by, in his words: found and discarded objects collected in abandoned houses, vacant lots, roadsides and second hand stores. Primitive culture, the animal world and today’s fast paced and disposable society continue to add fuel to his work.

San Francisco's FFDG is excited to announce the opening reception for MIDNIGHT ON THE SUN featuring over 60 new paintings by Los Angeles based artists Jay Howell & Mark Whalen (Kill Pixie). An opening reception will be held on Saturday February 18, 2012 (6-9pm). Also on the same night be a zine release for Jay Howell's newest zine THE DARK WAVE published by Unpiano Books & Mt.St.Mtn. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

To be added to the preview, email: info(at)ffdg.net

About Jay Howell
"Artist Jay Howell has been a strong presence in the Bay Area for the past few years (now living and working in Los Angeles), sharpening his cartoon-style drawings of skinny guys with erections, naked chicks on skateboards, dogs, beer, rockers, and endless good times. His art manages to be whimsical and crude at the same time, but above all damn right funny. His zine Punks Git Cut, and animated series called "The Forest City Rockers,” have deservingly earned him a devoted following. While “Forest City Rockers” seemed like the apex in punk rock cartoons, he’s taken things even further by developing the characters for Fox’s latest Sunday night animated sitcom, "Bob’s Burgers.” Produced by Loren Bouchard, best known for creating Comedy Central's "Dr. Katz Professional Therapist" and Adult Swim’s "Home Movies," "Bob’s Burgers’ about a family that runs a fumbling burger joint. Howell’s style and humor are a perfect match for the team, earning him a well deserved place alongside animation greats. Howell is currently in production developing a show for Nickelodeon." -Justine Sharrock, 2011

About Mark Whalen (Kill Pixie)
From his beginnings in Sydney, Australia, Mark Whalen has evolved into an artist whose meticulously crafted paintings and sculptures examine the human experience by exploring communication, emotion, sexuality, invention, interaction, and ritual - all with an undercurrent of quiet absurdity. Whalen’s line precision and glowing color palette is enhanced by the introduction of colors of light, caution and arousal, making the interaction of his subjects more accentuated and accessible. Thick, seductive layers of clear glossy resin create a post-modern plane for the artist to explore spatial possibilities and relativity within the narrative.

Whalen has evolved into an artist whose meticulously executed paintings now have a prominent place in galleries around the world. He was also included in 2009's Apocalypse Wow! Exhibition at MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, Italy, and 2010's SPACE INVADERS Exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia. His work has also appeared in publications such as Juxtapoz, Modart Europe, Lodown, Arkitip, Art Ltd., Anthem, and Monster Children. He currently lives and paints in Los Angeles California.

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The exhibition is open to the public and will be on view from February 18, 2012 - March 24, 2012. Gallery hours are as follow: Wednesday - Saturday 1pm - 6:00pm. And by appointment. FFDG is located at 2277 Mission Street, San Francisco CA 94110 For more information or to request a preview of the available work please contact the gallery at info(at)ffdg.net

Just finished my first new piece since taking off for almost 6 months to travel and be a bum. It's for a tribute show at BeepBeep Gallery in ATL. The show is a tribute to Brian Eno's Another Green World album, with a different artist interpreting each song off the album. I was lucky enough to get my favorite track, In Dark Trees. -Matt Relkin

A large selection of NYC based Dennis McNett's woodcut prints, sculptural forms, wall installations, paper mache masks in mythical and animalistic creations come to AR4T Gallery in Laguna Beach, CA with an opening set for Saturday, Feb 4th. Here's a little bit of a taste.

Dennis held a one day show @FFDG back in '09 as part of our In-N-Out series. Photos.

I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...

I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.

It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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